


Things You Said When You Were Scared

by TheRedGlass



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Clintasha - Freeform, F/M, Fear, History, Prompt Fic, Sadness, relationship origins, things you said
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 08:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3563669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRedGlass/pseuds/TheRedGlass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things you only say to the other person under special circumstances. Like when you’re scared, but you can’t admit it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things You Said When You Were Scared

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt response from a 'things you said when' post on Tumblr. Waitingfortheskeletonwar requested I do a Clintasha fic for #18, and so here it is. I really enjoyed this challenge. This chapter focuses on Natasha, and a second chapter will focus on Clint. Feedback is my anti-anti-drug so hit me up. Thanks for reading!

“Go ahead. Do it.”

If asked, Natasha would have vehemently denied the fear hiding behind those words as she stood facing Clint that first time, his bow pulled taut as she spotted him waiting to fulfill SHIELD’s orders. But Clint could see that fear lurking somewhere in the back of her eyes, even though her eyes, her face, were more overwhelmed with exhaustion, and even though he did not really know this woman beyond the logistics of her status as a target. But he recognized fear and hopelessness, and he knew her background from the file and despite what should have been pure professionalism, he’d been learning things about her as he tracked her, things that hit a little too close to home. So he lowered the bow, and she couldn’t completely suppress the surprise that flickered across her face. Like she was far too aware that she deserved it, and couldn’t believe that someone else could possibly disagree.

***

“I’m fine.”

She was bleeding when she said it, breathing heavily with blood flowing freely from the gash in her scalp she’d sustained while dodging fire and running through an abandoned industrial facility, Clint covering her from the rafters. Their second mission together. A bullet had ricocheted and sent a chunk of metal flying into her face. When they got to safety, their pursuers either eliminated or left behind, he’d noticed the ugly wound and tried to examine it, but she swatted his hand away, ignored his warnings about infection, blood loss, and had she seen how rusty and disgusting all that abandoned equipment had been? She’d ignored him, and had kept wiping the blood out of her eyes as they waited for the extraction team. She had her walls up, he recognized, and wasn’t going to take them down, not for a little blood. Even though part of her wanted to. Everything she’d ever been taught told her the wanting was bad, and all that mattered was the mission. There was no time, no room for weakness. Help was not allowed.

***

“Don’t look at me.”

Clint had found her outside in the snowstorm, no shoes, no coat. His only warning about the mental break had been her lack of focus at dinner meeting they’d been required to attend, the way her smile was even thinner and more painted on than usual, the way her eyes were dull and listless, the way she tensed at small noises. She had refused to talk once dinner was over, bidding him a terse ‘good night’ before slipping off to her room. He was lucky that their rooms were around the corner from each other, and that he’d found himself struggling with insomnia at two in the morning when he heard someone go running past his door. He waited for an alarm, for someone to come and wake him and say there was a situation, but nothing. And then some instinct without a name told him that maybe Natasha was in trouble - the same instinct that had told him to lower his bow, had kept him looking out for her when she joined SHIELD even when she made it clear that she didn’t think she deserved help, that everything should be done on her own. Not that she wasn’t incredibly capable, but there were cracks running inside and through her marble exterior and they couldn’t hold up forever under the pressure. So when he went to her room, knocked, got no answer, he was moving towards the nearest exit almost before he could think. He’d seen the way she’d eyed the storm through the windows, that buckshot chaos of blinding white seeming to hypnotize her for a moment. And when he stepped out onto that balcony, there she was in the very thick of it, standing locked in place as the snowflakes pelted her skin. She was in the shorts and tank top that she slept in, and he could see the shivers she tried to repress. He called her name through the fierce wind, and she didn’t turn around. He went to her side and touched her arm gently, calling her name again. This time she didn’t flinch away, but her voice was thin and vulnerable when she told him not to look at her. He could see the demons warring inside her, their claws reflecting in her eyes. She was punishing herself, he realized, for things she couldn’t forget. Things she wanted to atone for, but didn’t know how. He’d slipped a coat on before he’d gone looking for her, and now he took it off and put it around her shoulders, turning and guiding her gently back inside. She didn’t pull away. She let him help.

***

“Please don’t go.”

He’d thought he’d imagined it at first when she’d said it. She’d gotten injured on a mission again, and had somehow managed to hide it from everyone until he found her alone in a corner of the training room too early in the morning, bleeding onto the floor. He’d only been up so early on a whim, had only wandered into the training facility for not knowing what else to do. Unless some part of him had known, and had sent him into that room on purpose to find her crouched in a corner, pressing on the wound in her side, blood dripping from between her fingers. He knew something was well and truly wrong when he didn’t have to talk her into letting him carry her. She made a soft noise of protest as they approached the infirmary, but one deep, concerned look from him had been enough to cut it short. The demons had come back, he surmised as he watched the nurse on duty examine her, clean the wound, and patch it up. They had come back and she’d gone to fight them the only way she knew how - physically, pushing herself, fighting pain with pain. But this time she’d gone too far and it had backfired on her, turning into another weakness that had sent her to the floor. Something must have gotten through to her finally, because this time she had allowed the help and for that he was grateful. He did not expect that wall to stay lowered, though, and was surprised when she asked in a soft voice if he could help her back to her room when the nurse cleared her to leave. He’d nodded, and walked slowly alongside her back down the dim hallways, expecting to leave her just outside her door but she held the door open and looked at him and so he’d followed her in, helping her get into bed stiffly, bringing her a glass of water to help her swallow the painkillers she’d been given and that he’d spent most of the trip to her room convincing her to take. When she was settled into bed, he turned to go. That’s when she’d spoken and her hand crept from under the blankets to reach towards him hesitantly. It took him a moment to process the scene, to be sure he’d heard correctly. And when he realized that he had, he turned back and pulled a chair up close to her bed, letting her rest her hand on his knee as she settled in to sleep.

***

“You don’t know what I am.”

That wasn’t true. He had seen her file, had tracked her for weeks when SHIELD had given him the initial hit order. He knew she had darkness twisted up inside her, but she was not that darkness. He told her as much, and she shook her head, fragments of tears shimmering in each eye even as she struggled obviously to hold them back. She couldn’t speak for long moments, and then when she could, that darkness inside came out, word by word. He listened, his stomach twisting now and again at the horrific things she recounted in a flat, emotionless voice. And when she finished, she looked up at him, her eyes wide and expectant as a child’s, waiting for punishment, waiting to be abandoned.

He knew it was dangerous but he didn’t have the words to tell her how wrong she was, that she deserved love and care just like anyone else, and he found himself reaching out gently to cup her chin, and when she didn’t push him away he leaned in slowly his lips brushed hers and he was still afraid that she was just too shocked to react so he started to lean back but then her hand was around the back of his neck and her lips were pressing to his, kissing him back, drinking him in frantically but also hesitantly, like she couldn’t believe this was real and not part of another cover, another job she had to do. He whispered to her between kisses, promised her of the reality, promised her he wanted nothing but for her to be happy, to be okay. She whispered back that she didn’t deserve those things, and he kissed her to silence those lies, replacing them with another string of promises.


End file.
